They gathered again to say goodbye again to Tim Husted, a man whose life was so big it continues, even today, to be remembered and mourned. Again.

He earned an original memorial tribute up at Low Gap Park’s amphitheater not long after he died, and here it is all these years later and old friends still won’t let go. That first service fetched 150 or so people; last week there wasn’t a third that number. Fourteen years will do that to a crowd.

It was good enough just to have known Tim Husted. You could congratulate yourself for that alone, and saying goodbye once every decade or so isn’t more than any of us are happy to do. He was that kind of guy, and more. Even two memorials may not be enough.

My family spent summer vacations in Northern Michigan during the ‘50s and ‘60s with the Husteds and the Benores, another Toledo family, this one headed up by Uncle Russell and Aunt Mary Beth. As a little kid Timmy treated even littler kids with kindness. He was friendly with me and included me in things, which not many older kids are willing to do. My older siblings, for instance.

Eventually youngsters get too old for vacations, which is really the only reason parents schedule them anyway, and we all quit our Michigan ways when I was 13 or so. Timmy and I failed to stay in touch given the 100-mile Cleveland-Toledo separation, and later I heard he’d gone off to college somewhere, and so did I. I didn’t think of him much and never saw him again.

Until, of course, I landed in Ukiah.

Even then it took a few years. Timmy (by now, Tim) was mobbed up with a batch of Toledo cats who’d arrived en masse, and they’d set up a hippie outpost way down Low Gap Road where cops and building inspectors rarely roamed. He built things out of wood, he brewed beer. I arrived in Ukiah alone and stayed that way.

When we encountered one another once more, 15 years and 2,500 miles later, it was in a bar. Where else? Tim was curled up with a Guinness at the old Wine Glass joint out at The Forks. I saw him, took the stool adjacent and said, as if we’d last spoken an hour ago, “So it looks like Uncle Russell took first place in that ‘round-the-world race. Drove the ’08 Abbott.”

After a long interval Tim turned his head about 10 degrees in my direction, as if not sure to whom the words had been addressed. “Huh,” he finally said. “You’d think he would’ve taken the Stanley Steamer.”

Our collective uncle, Russell Benore, had indeed been on the front page of that morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, with a big photo of him grinning madly while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge finish line driving one of his stable of ancient restored automobiles.

When it came time to replenish my Coors, Tim nudged the bottle aside, insisted the bartender bring a pair of Guinness instead and we talked. We agreed to drink some more some other times.

But Tim was part of that Toledo mafia and moved in that circle. I was a proud Buckeye, but never learned the secret handshake, never got the decoder ring. I watched, as I do, from a distance. It was close enough. Tim Husted burned bright.

• Tim was the first man in Mendocino County history to travel Highway 175 over the Hopland grade wearing only a Norton motorcycle.

• He hand-built the beautiful bar at the Hopland pub where Red Tail Ale made its debut.

• Only man in carnival history to drive a Destruction Derby car while wearing a tuxedo. Random pieces and parts of that automobile, the Emotional Rescue, may still be found scattered about the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds. Need a rearview mirror or glove box for a ’68 Chevy? Check the infield.

• First boy my sister ever kissed, circa 1957, Onaway, Michigan.

• Key member of the small crew that built the Ukiah Playhouse. Starred in a couple productions. Was in a movie. Built his own kayak.

• Heroic drinker, world class carouser, with an uncanny ability to mimic sounds, noises, birds and a few insects.

• Years ago his ashes were washed out to sea off the Caspar coast, wrapped in a bunch of his old t-shirts. Had I had a vote I’d have picked Toledo’s Maumee River as the more suitable waterway, but who among the living thinks it makes a difference?

The most recent gathering, a few days ago at Todd Grove Park, was to dedicate a new bench bearing a small plaque in Tim Husted’s honor. A single snapshot of the bench had circulated as advertising for the memorial event, and it showed a homeless fellow laying across it, deep in sleep.

Tim would have been delighted. I can easily imagine him tucking a twenty dollar bill in the gentleman’s coat pocket while he slept.

Tom Hine tips his cap in the direction of J. Holden, who orchestrated both this event and the one in ’04 at Low Gap. The first memorial was transcendent, says TWK, recalling numerous attendees’ sentimental journeys with Tim Husted, punctuated by J’s aching, keening harmonica. His yearning music was accompanied by sweet harmonies from a bowl of lemons, a pitcher of ice and a quart of gin.